Allan Donald slams Bangladesh bowlers for lack of smartness, defends bowling coach Walsh

The Bangladesh cricket team has suffered a lot of humiliation at the hands of the South African team. They’ve been outplayed in every format and in every department especially their bowling, which has seemed clawless ever since they landed here.

Former South African and legendary bowler Allan Donald who celebrates his 51st birthday today, spoke to Bangladesh’ leading daily Kaler Kantho. He listed out the parameters which the Bangladesh bowlers failed to meet while bowling in South Africa and how they lacked plans to execute.

Bangladesh bowlers aren’t smart enough

Allan Donald was quite outright and twisted no words in describing the current bowling lineup of the Bangladeshi tigers.

Donald said the bowlers need to be smart: “Your bowlers have to be smart. Only skills won’t make you a good bowler, smartness is also very important to get success. If they aren’t able to learn anything from Walsh, then I will say they are not smart enough.”

While he agreed that there were some potential bowlers, he felt that they were quite wayward and didn’t asses the pitch properly.

He added: “Bangladesh have some good bowlers. But I don’t see anyone bowling with some plans. Though its not right to say so much about them for me as I don’t see all the matches of Bangladesh.”

Mashrafe Mortaza seems to be the only one bowling according to a plan

The former pacer went on to describe how the bowler is supposed to portray his plans to the skipper in order to get a field of his thinking. He also went on to remark that he didn’t find anyone other than skipper Mashrafe Mortaza impressive under this aspect.

“I think when it comes to bowling, the bowler himself is the captain. The captain will set the field that’s right but it has to match with the bowler’s thinking. We used to do like this in our time. But I didn’t see today that any of the Bangladeshi bowler went to the skipper and talked.”

He included: “I only saw your skipper (Mashrafe Mortaza) who bowled smartly and had some plans. Maybe he was hit for boundaries, but he had some definite plans unlike other bowlers. I saw Mustafizur Rahman in Test series. He bowled very well in IPL. But Test is very different than ODI and T20. He has to take this challenge. For becoming a world class bowler, he has to bowl well in the flat wickets too.”

Walsh is legendary, it’s the bowlers’ failure, not the coach

When asked if their bowling coach i.e. all-time great Courtney Walsh, also responsible for such a poor outing by the Bangladeshi bowlers, Donald didn’t mince words in throwing the blame back to the bowlers.

“Where is Walsh’s fault here? You have got a world class and legendary bowler as coach. If your bowlers don’t learn anything from him, then its their failure.”